A most egregious aspect of this bill is that you can be an American citizen, but if they suspect you of being an unlawfully present immigrant (i.e. not white), they can still arrest you if you don't present your US passport. How uncool is that? Even citizens now have to carry passports in their own country.

After Obama and the JACL hammered this, I decided to write a post, which would include me asking: How many reading this have been asked to show their ID in South Korea to prove they were there legally?

kushibo - there is a difference between showing your passport/immigration papers in order to receive legal or government services, and being forced to show them or get arrested whenever any police officer feels like asking you about them - specifically because you are [whatever race you are].

Why haven't y'all complained about the harrassment that has gone on for decades at them?

Oh, Kushibo, isn't South Korea lucky that it doesn't share a border with a country in which over 10% of its population now lives to the north of its border because their government can't provide for their own? And what would the government here do if the North decided to allow 10% of its population to come across the DMZ at one time?

Tiffani and John, I'm not sure what hidden meaning either of you two thought I was getting at in my question, but it was just a question. I myself have never been asked by anyone in authority to see my documents when I'm out and about, except when involved in a traffic accident, but I'm wondering if others have — if not some tall blonde who looks like they might be an illegal English teacher, then someone who looks Filipina/o or other Southeast Asian or South Asian.

Tiffani wrote:kushibo - there is a difference between showing your passport/immigration papers in order to receive legal or government services, and being forced to show them or get arrested whenever any police officer feels like asking you about them - specifically because you are [whatever race you are].

I'm aware of that. Among my circle of friends and acquaintances, no one in South Korea has been abused in this way, but neither has anyone in California, either, except for one relative who kept getting moving violations by cops who thought he was Mexican.

Anyway, I'm not really sure what you were thinking I was saying, so I don't know how to respond to it.

John wrote:There are several U.S. border checkpoints several miles inland (up to 100 miles) that have asked for proof of my citizenship since the day I was born in Brownsville, Texas.

Except when crossing the border, I've never been asked for proof of anything, and even then it was just proof that I lived in California. Frankly, I always thought it was weird how lax they were.

Falfurrias Border Checkpoint that is not on the border at all

On Interstate 5 going through Camp Pendleton, basically an empty stretch between the populated part of San Diego County to the south and Orange County and Los Angeles to the north, there is a border patrol checkpoint but they usually just wave people on past.

Why haven't y'all complained about the harrassment that has gone on for decades at them?

Asking people for such identification at a border checkpoint is not so strange; randomly demanding people show it anywhere within the state is another matter.

Really, I'm almost imagining a German accent going, "Papers, please!"

Oh, Kushibo, isn't South Korea lucky that it doesn't share a border with a country in which over 10% of its population now lives to the north of its border because their government can't provide for their own? And what would the government here do if the North decided to allow 10% of its population to come across the DMZ at one time?

Really, I'm not sure what you're getting at. Did you think I was asking why America is so fascist or something while South Korea is so lenient, or something like that? Because really I was just trying to see if South Korea is actually any better than Arizona in this regard.

I'm of South Asian ethnicity. In my two years here, no one has ever asked me for identification in daily life, but my passport always receives extra scrutiny at Incheon airport because I don't look Canadian.

Correct me if I'm looking at the wrong version of the bill, or if I've missed that particular section, but I don't actually see anything in the bill (actual text in http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/50leg/2r/bills/sb1070s.pdf I believe) that would require US Citizens to carry US passports while inside the US for identification purposes.

The closest I can find is this (it was already in all-caps in the bill):

E. A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER, WITHOUT A WARRANT, MAY ARREST A PERSON IF THE OFFICER HAS PROBABLE CAUSE TO BELIEVE THAT THE PERSON HAS COMMITTED ANY PUBLIC OFFENSE THAT MAKES THE PERSON REMOVABLE FROM THE UNITED STATES.

I don't see a mention in http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/summary/s.1070pshs.doc.htm about this either (although according to this it would become an offence for an alien to fail to carry their alien registration card around with them, which I suppose would match with NY Times's statement about it being an offense for immigrants to fail to carry their immigration documents with them).

I am aghast that the governor has signed the bill (http://farmersbranchblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/04/arizona-governor-gives-lengthy.html) given the extremely high level of resistance to it.

There are several U.S. border checkpoints several miles inland (up to 100 miles) that have asked for proof of my citizenship since the day I was born in Brownsville, Texas. ... Why haven't y'all complained about the harassment that has gone on for decades at them?

Because having a checkpoint at one place is different from having your citizenship questioned no matter where you are and no matter what you are doing.

FfK,

I don't actually see anything in the bill ... that would require US Citizens to carry US passports while inside the US for identification purposes.

The relevant part is this:

FOR ANY LAWFUL CONTACT MADE BY A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE WHERE REASONABLE SUSPICION EXISTS THAT THE PERSON IS AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES, A REASONABLE ATTEMPT SHALL BE MADE, WHEN PRACTICABLE, TO DETERMINE THE IMMIGRATION STATUS OF THE PERSON.

When this is carried out, it means that the police can ask for anyone's ID at any time, and the person had better be able to produce it on the spot, or drop everything and stand still until you can prove your citizenship.

The biggest problem with the bill is that it takes away any benefit of the doubt. Lost your drivers license, or was your passport stolen? You're in tough sh!t.

I'll be waiting for the first lawsuit coming from a private citizen who was detained / unreasonably searched against the state.

That being said, this does raise some interesting questions about what rights an illegal resident has, or should have. Should a legitimate citizen be asked to show ID anytime someone in authority demands it? In some circumstances, yes - with the understanding that a citizen's complaint to the officer's boss would be taken seriously.

Should be translated to, if you are brown = be prepared to be treated as 3rd class citizens.

I don't go many places in the UK anymore the racism is incredible everywhere these days. You ask directions from a cop and get told to fuck off back home or before you even get a word in side ways they tell you immigration department is in Salford. If you complain you get arrested and searched as a terrorist.

The Chinese Guy wrote:Should be translated to, if you are brown = be prepared to be treated as 3rd class citizens.

I think dark-haired White people with facial hair should also worry.

I don't go many places in the UK anymore the racism is incredible everywhere these days. You ask directions from a cop and get told to fuck off back home or before you even get a word in side ways they tell you immigration department is in Salford. If you complain you get arrested and searched as a terrorist.

Has stuff like that really happened to you or are you speaking with hyperbole? 'Cuz not just a few expats in the K-globs talk with the same kind of indignation about stuff, and if you call them out on it, it's often stuff that happened to someone else or stuff they think would happen to someone but hasn't actually happened.

There is plenty of low level stuff like if you get on the bus people will ask you where you are from. I don't travel by bus often.

Or people who you ignore for inane comments will make nasty comments in English thinking you won't understand.

Or you go to a pub and people will say under their breath don't want spit in me pint. (I don't go into pubs now much anymore either).

Or that you get stopped for 'routine' inspections when driving along in your car more. This happens less as I ride a motorbike these days and it is impossible to see my skin colour from the gear I wear.

Yhe cop that told me to fuck off back home was in Manchester city centre in Picadilly gardens. I had wanted to know where Jenny's had moved to.

The woman who told me to go to immigration was a metrolink employee who did not apologise for her mistake she just told me to fuck off back home if I didn't like it.

However it does not help that I live in a pish poor city where there are so many murders you have to ask which one, where we have places called little beiruit and rape city (a period were in 3 months there were 14 reported raped 10 of those women, 4 of those male on male rapes).

People may ask why do I stay here? I'm looking to move back East come August, just that certian things need to be put into motion first before I can make this move.

However it is a hell of a lot better than the 1960s and 1970s (my family has been around since the 1860s) where there was regular lethal amounts of violence.

Actually there is a funny story well its not really funny about a rape case in London, in that the police went round asking for volunteers to help Black men to 'help' i.e. to give their DNA, if they refused they were arrested and DNA extracted like that.

The Chinese Guy, I apologize in advance if this sounds insensitive or dismissive, but it sounds like you need to do two things (a) suck it up that you're in a place where you can no longer enjoy racial transparency as you did "back home" (I'm assuming you're originally from HK, where you would blend in as one who looks like the de facto group), and (b) don't treat the worst cases as if they're representative of everybody else.

I'm not saying England is some bastion of racial tolerance and you've unluckily happened across the handful of outliers that exist in the country, but if you let these bad encounters turn into chips on your shoulder, you will not only not change things but you will make yourself miserable and end up looking for trouble even where it's not and in some cases you will end up creating it.

People on the bus asking where your from sounds like every Whitish or Blackish foreigner's experience in Korea — or Himeji, Japan, or Lincoln, Nebraska, or name your place.

The other crap, well, the way you described it almost sounds like you're seeking bad encounters and, like a few commenters on some prominent K-blogs, you're in danger of developing the ability to see insult and disparagement wherever you go.

Sorry if that sounds harsh, but the reality is that when you're a minority in just about any country, you will experience a load of things — often, but not always, negative — that those who enjoy so-called "racial transparency" do not.

Your choices are to get a thicker skin or to go back home, and maybe work on ways to makes some changes, but whining and making grand generalizations about all the people and superlative claims about how racist they are is usually not the way to do the last one.

But what you seem to be implying is that it is getting worse, if anything it has gotten better over the years.

Recession doesn't help nor does the fact that Ethnic Far Eastern Asians out earn out achieve and out live the natives. Nor does current government social policy.

My experience reflects that of James Kim who I met in Seoul a Korean similar to the Korean who runs this site. (though he was born in LA rather than migrated there when he grew up). He went to Seoul to learn how to make Hamjungsuk.

He said he often had to fight too as people would be racist and if he didn't it would only escalate the intimidation and crime comitted against him.

His experience reflects mine, whereby groups would pick on us weak asians as we were seen to be pussies.

I've had my nose broken so many times I can't breathe through it anymore, but I've not had my face kicked in since the 90s.

But as said if anything it is getting better, my dad tells me loads of stories of his time in England. He actually reminicses about them as if they were good times.

I could tell you some incredible 2nd hand stories from my dad they are incredibly dark but really funny in silly kind of way.

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The Korean is a Korean American living in Washington D.C. / Northern Virginia. He lived in Seoul until he was 16, then moved to Los Angeles area. The Korean refers to himself in the third person because he thinks it sounds cool.